Quips, queries, and querulous quibbles from the quirky mind of Don Kahle

Is Eugene ready to support another professional sport franchise? Yes, I think so. Our longtime support of the Eugene Emeralds has shown there’s a professional sports audience here. Lane United Football Club has committed to six home soccer matches at the rebuilt Civic Park, as soon as it becomes available.

The University of Oregon’s recent success in football, softball, and basketball has added to the city’s legendary reputation for hosting some of the best track meets on the planet. Hosting the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championships in 2021, we expect our reimagined Hayward Field will captivate a worldwide audience.

Eugene’s bona fides for hosting sporting events are unquestioned, but do you notice anything missing from our current offerings? Only the Emeralds host more than a half dozen annual competitions. Only Lane United fields a team that plays the best competition available. Only some University of Oregon teams play indoors, or feature women athletes.

What’s missing represents an opportunity.

Eugene should gather a group of investors ready to relocate a WNBA franchise to Eugene in 2020. The professional women’s basketball currently has 12 teams. They play a regular season of 34 games through the summer. The closest franchises are in Las Vegas and Seattle.

Portland had a team, but it folded after only three seasons. Back then, each team was owned by the same local NBA owner, but WNBA teams are now independently owned. Oregon hasn’t had a professional women’s team to root for since 2002.

Some of the most successful WNBA franchises are not in major cities. If you’ve never heard of Uncasville, Connecticut, then you probably don’t know the name Geno Auriemma either. But if you’ve followed women’s basketball, you know what juggernaut teams — and a devoted fanbase — Auriemma has built at the University of Connecticut, 35 miles north of Uncasville.

Synergies with collegiate competition have proven more reliable than with local NBA teams. The women play the game a bit differently. Their fans would say it’s better.

Is UO Head Coach Kelly Graves building something comparable to Auriemma’s success here in Eugene? It’s not too soon to begin planning for it. The Oregon Ducks have built the largest fan base in the PAC-12, with room to grow inside the Matthew Knight Arena.

When Sabrina Ionescu announced she would not leave school a year early to pursue her career as a professional player in the WNBA, she made her motivations as clear as a pass off the pick-and-roll. She remains devoted Graves’s vision when he recruited her. She could come to Eugene and help build a program and culture that would continue long after her four years.

That’s the “unfinished business” she decided she couldn’t walk away from — even though she was projected to be the No. 1 pick in this year’s WNBA draft. We can extend the success she’s brought to this town and her sport by moving a WNBA franchise here.

We want to watch her and some of her teammates play professionally, and then those she has inspired, in the sport — and town — they love.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Are you a frugal consumer, buying only what’s on sale? Are you a conscious consumer, rewarding sustainable practices? Are you a local consumer, favoring nearby makers and growers? Are you a used goods consumer, reusing what’s already been produced? Are you a holistic consumer, weighing your options for each purchase?

If you answered “Yes” to any of those questions or a dozen more just like them, then you are a consumer. That’s worth noting, as we mark Earth Week. We all agree that over-consumption is a problem for people, society and the planet. But consumerism is the deeper problem.

Consuming is not at the root of the problem. Consumers are.

If you and I think of ourselves as consumers — of any stripe — then we stand poised to consume. Inevitably, we will sometimes consume too much. “But,” we’ll think to ourselves, “at least we did our consuming in the most [insert self-aggrandizing adjective here] way possible.”

Do you see the problem here? As long as our consuming habits build our self-esteem and affirm our identity, we perpetuate the real problem. We work so hard to improve our consumer habits, overlooking how those efforts reinforce our identity as consumers.

If we think of ourselves first as consumers, what is likely to be the solution to every problem we encounter? Now you’re getting it. Our sustainable, organic, woke, local thriftiness makes us feel empowered and esteemed. Where can we turn when our purchasing power produces more purchasing and less power?

This is our shared dilemma. But because everybody is in it, none of us recognize it. If everybody is in the same boat, our surroundings lose their boatiness. So (deep breath), what should we do?

The answer is, “Almost anything, except shopping.” Dig a hole. Call your mother. Take a class. Hit the gym. Go for a walk. Organize a closet. Solve a puzzle. Be something other than a consumer for a little while.

That’s not to say you won’t be consuming something. You may need a shovel or a shoe or a shelf for your non-consumer tasks. Buying something because of what you’re doing is different from buying things because it’s who you are. Buying isn’t the problem; building our identities around what and how we buy is.

The simplest fix we can achieve collectively is becoming a national movement, organized by PIRG and other consumer-interest organizations. Eight states are currently debating Fair Repair or Right to Repair laws. They would give consumers and third-party repair shops access to the same repair information (and specialty tools) as product manufacturers. Until a few days ago, Oregon was among those states.

State Senator James Manning (D – Eugene) was a chief sponsor of HB2688, along with Rep. Rob Nosse (D – Portland). A hearing was held on April 22, Earth Day, but it won’t pass out of the House Business and Labor Committee this session. Talk has already begun to bring the bill back in 2020.

We should each have the right to fix our own stuff. But our stuff is not what most needs fixing. It’s us.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

There was no collusion. There couldn’t have been. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin wanted to embarrass and weaken Hillary Clinton, but in different ways. Putin wanted Trump to win the presidency. Trump wanted to narrowly lose.

Putin aimed to weaken America and its democratic ideals as much as possible. He knew he could make the democratic world order quiver if not collapse under the weight of a chaotic and acrimonious election.

Trump saw nothing wrong with participating, so long as it boosted his own celebrity and wealth. He planned to keep his day job as a real estate mogul, a television star, and a spokesperson for white male victimhood. He never wanted to live in the White House.

Public testimony from Trump’s sycophants paint a clear picture of a man who launched a political campaign to burnish his brand. He picked his sidekicks as costars in his reality show, never expecting they would have any real responsibilities.

Everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the race. Trump cast himself as the star of the Washington Generals, losing to the Harlem Globetrotters, but just barely. All that mattered was that the crowd got a good show.

But then something went wrong. Thanks to the Electoral College and Democratic overconfidence, Trump became the dog that caught the car. Trump’s Plan B became Plan A.

Putin’s feigned interest in a Trump Tower Moscow would have to wait a few years. Putin must have snickered at Trump’s proposal of the penthouse suite as a kickback. Trump couldn’t understand that Putin’s graft was on a much grander scale.

Putin may have pretended to like the idea of Ivanka’s spa catering to the ultra-wealthy who suspiciously hang around the Russian Kremlin. It was only fair. After sending Russian cronies to Florida and New York to launder their money with overpriced real estate, the Trump family wanted their turn to hide its wealth from tax authorities.

It was as if Putin promised to sell Trump a condo with private access to all the up-and-comers in the neighborhood. Only after the sale was completed did Trump realize his unit had no windows at all, but shared a thinly insulated wall with the building’s elevator. Trump failed to read the fine print, and had no one to blame but himself.

Which is exactly the opposite of what he had wanted. Trump aimed to narrowly lose to Hillary, so he could blame the crooked media for his underserved misfortune. This is the role he has perfected in the media for decades. It was the role he was born to play.

I can picture him scheming with Roger Ailes and Bill Shine, two Fox News executives fired for sexual improprieties. Together, they could take over Fox News or launch a competing network. Bill O’Reilly, similarly deposed, would be their headline star, after Trump himself.

He must have been envisioning constant access to the airwaves to question every move made by President Hillary and Obama before her, without ever offering better ideas. Indeed, that describes pretty well how he spends his days, neglecting the job he inadvertently won.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Sabrina Ionescu, the Ducks’ phenom guard, has collected more accolades than any trophy case can hold — PAC-12 Player of the Year, NCAA All-American, 2019 West Region Tournament Most Valuable Player, etcetera, etcetera. Many of us will be watching her play this weekend, hoping to see her earn even more hardware. But by Monday, the season will be over and we all — Sabrina included — will have to resume our lives. What life lessons can we learn from Sabrina?

Carve multiple paths to success.

Sabrina is seldom the tallest or the strongest or the quickest player on the court, but no player in collegiate history has combined scoring, rebounding, and passing better. If she returns for her senior year, she will likely double the next best player in NCAA history — men or women — for racking up ten or more points, rebounds, and assists in the same game. When Sabrina is prevented from scoring, she simply contributes more in other ways.

Each of us is good at something. Some of us excel at more than one thing. But getting good at multiple things can make you as unstoppable as Sabrina.

Help others succeed by sharing.

Whether she’s driving for the basket or surveying the court for a last-second shot, Sabrina is always watching for a teammate who is positioned well to score. She has a habit of looking over her shoulder when leading a fast break, checking for a teammate who may have an easier path to the basket.

You may have a neighbor or family member who can succeed with just a little help from you. Give them that chance and enjoy the success you’ve helped to create.

Help where it will make a difference.

I’ve watched Sabrina during warm-ups and after games and I can tell you that she never stops surveying the situation in front of her. She uses the same skill to find the young girls who want a signature or a smile and a high-five. She invests her attention where she believes it will make the biggest difference.

Eugene has a rich tapestry of non-profit organizations. Many rely on volunteers and donations. Keep an eye out for how you can help those who are doing the work you care most about.

Do your best, and have fun doing it.

Sabrina is a serious player, but she plays loose. During the rare moments when she’s on the bench, she never stops cheering for her teammates. She even tried scoring from the bench recently. Nobody ever said you can’t have fun and still be taken seriously, except maybe the referee who whistled Sabrina’s infraction against Portland State.

Enjoy the moment, but don’t live in it.

If Sabrina has a single defining characteristic, it’s her ambition. She’s constantly looking for ways to improve, for new goals to achieve. We could use a little boost of that same Vitamin A here. Sabrina may soak up a moment of celebration, but she uses every congratulation as fuel to reach her next goal. Every accomplishment earns you a brief pause in the action, to be followed quickly by, “What’s next?”

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

After the 2016 presidential election, I pledged never to vote for another Baby Boomer. Boomers have prevailed in the last seven, almost always beating other boomers. We’ve overstayed our welcome on the stage.

I’m glad the Democratic field includes plenty of young talent. One of them might catch fire in the months ahead. Until that happens, I’m reserving my right to keep my promise in the opposite direction.

Pre-boomer Bernie Sanders might be able to build a movement beneath his candidacy, pitting himself against a Republican candidate who has also shown an ability to energize his political base. Unfortunately for the country, neither has shown much ongoing interest in attracting centrists.

I’m afraid a Sanders candidacy would be foiled by the electoral college. He could win by huge margins in a few large states like New York and California, but lose too many other states by small margins. Democrats have won the popular vote and lost the election this way too often.

Joe Biden, another member of the generation before boomers, might be another story. He hasn’t yet announced his candidacy, but all signs point to him joining the race for the White House for a third, last time. He would be an attractive candidate in the Midwestern states that Hillary neglected before the election, and Trump’s policies have neglected since.

A Biden campaign would be stronger if he did two things immediately that no modern presidential candidate has done. First, he should select a running mate who is younger than 55 — not a boomer — who will excite the activist wing of the Democratic party.

Running mates typically are announced shortly before the summer political convention, just months before the general election. That tradition may have outlasted its usefulness. Campaigning as a ticket across the country for 18 months would break through with a clear message or generational transition.

Biden’s second innovation would strengthen his first. He should pledge to serve only one term and to endorse his running mate in the 2024 election. This will dramatically change the job description for the Vice President, in a way that only a former vice president could do.

Youthful presidential candidates more typically tap an older political veteran as their running mate. Barack Obama chose Biden for exactly this reason, following the lead of George W. Bush picking Dick Cheney, and John Kennedy running with Lyndon Johnson.

Flip that model on its head. Give a 2024 candidate four years of job training before they vie to take that seat behind the Resolute desk.

The 2020 election will involve some very difficult conversations, for liberals and centrists alike. Everybody wants the county to move forward. A new generation of leaders must emerge. But many Americans also desperately want to undo the results of our 2016 election. Many want a do-over.

Biden represents a unique opportunity to rewind, reset, undo the last four years. Only an elder statesman could give the world confidence that America still knows how to correct its mistakes. But Biden could do more. He could prepare us for a brighter future, aiding his running mate’s 2024 campaign by promising to train her.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Should Oregon lower the age for voter participation to 16? The most common argument I hear against the change is that 16-year-olds are still children. That might turn out to be the strongest argument in its favor.

Most 16-year-olds are still in high school and almost all of them are still living with their parents. Two years later, when they reach the current minimum voting age, most of these young people hope to have moved out of their childhood home, either to attend college or to begin their working lives.

When would society prefer to introduce this important privilege and responsibility of citizenship? Shortly after a person has left home for the first time and is completely on their own, surrounded by peers who are in the same predicament? Or while they’re taking history classes in high school, attending mandatory school assemblies, and are still under the watchful eyes of their parents?

Habits that form early are the hardest habits to break. Abundant research shows that voting is like smoking in this way. If you become a smoker while you are still assembling your self-image, you tend to stay a smoker forever, or until some dramatic life change intervenes. The same appears to be true about voting. If a teenager considers him or herself a voter, the habit and self-image will reinforce one another forever.

Will teenagers make mature decisions? Not always, but the chances are better when they are being watched by those who can cut their allowance or give them a failing grade. We don’t seem hesitant to eat a burger flipped, or to accept change counted by a 16-year-old. Supervision allows order to be maintained.

Those who hold jobs pay taxes. Give them a share in societal decision-making. They might not make the same choices as we would, but they will differ earnestly. They may do more research on ballot issues than many older people. Whenever a 16-year-old drives a car, every driver on that road shares the risks caused by their inclusion. Why should society in general be any different?

I can’t think of a better way to revitalize how history and rhetoric are taught in the schools. The lessons and techniques would suddenly seem much less abstract. Citizenship itself would become less a concept than a practice. Imagine how real our school funding debates would become when students still in those schools had a voice on Election Day.

Take it one step further. How many parents of wide-eyed teenagers would suddenly feel an urgency to vote that they hadn’t felt before? They might bone up on issues for dinner table debates with their children. They may vote in order to zero out their own child’s idealism. That would still be more empowering than non-voting — for everyone involved.

Empowerment without supervision is what we should be trying to reduce, especially for teenagers. Watch a group of college freshmen struggling with ready access to alcohol and tell me their habits wouldn’t be healthier if they began when parental supervision was still firmly in place.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

I learned a lesson last month by being late to church. I was housesitting for friends and another friend was preaching at a church where he regularly volunteers. I used Google Maps to estimate my commute and organized my morning around a timely departure.

I read the paper, drank my morning cup of warmth, fed the cat, took out the trash, then started the car. Google Maps guided me out of the city and onto the highway, projecting that I would arrive at my friend’s church 15 minutes before the service began. Everything was going exactly according to plan, until it didn’t.

I had forgotten to turn off the tea kettle burner. After my initial panic, I had three quick thoughts. First, if I had been at home, I would have known neighbors who could be imposed on to enter my house and turn off the stove. Second, how long before our smart houses can turn off a stove on its own?

And third, why doesn’t mapping software include an undo button? Certainly, I was not the first person to head off somewhere before realizing I had reason to return to where I started. As it was, I fumbled with my phone to reenter my originating address, seeking help to return to my friends’ house as efficiently as possible. Time was suddenly of the essence.

So much for arriving early! So much for everything going exactly according to plan! My friend doesn’t carry a phone, so all I could do was rehearse my apology in the car as I drove.

I returned to the house, turned off the stove, got back in the car, and reentered the church address. Google Maps told me I would be arriving at 10:42. It also told me something else that turned out to be more important. I knew I would be twelve minutes late to church, but I also knew that there was nothing I could do about it.

Even if I drove recklessly, I was still going to be ten or eleven minutes late. So it became obvious that there was no reason to risk getting a ticket or causing an accident. The Google gods had decreed my fate. It was right there on the screen, staring back at me.

That was the surprise. An unexpected calm came over me. My general anxiety — “I’m going to be late!” was replaced with a very specific disappointment — “I will miss the first 15 minutes of the service.” Given this precise data, I calculated that I probably wouldn’t miss the sermon, which was really the point of the trip. I relaxed and worked on my apology.

Of course it all worked out fine. That was never really in doubt. But my morning epiphany was as profound as any I might have gotten from my friend’s sermon. Anxiety is rooted in what we don’t know, and one of the most common things we don’t know is how much delay will be caused by an unexpected obstacle.

We now have tools to estimate many of those delays, lowering our anxiety. They haven’t arrived a moment too soon.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

You should read a newspaper every morning, especially if you are busy. It’s good to know what’s going on in the world, but that’s not how you benefit most from this daily habit.

Open a broadsheet newspaper and you are confronted with roughly a half dozen articles vying for your attention. Headlines, photos with captions, charts, pull quotes, capsule summaries — what will your eye? Turn the page and the process repeats.

You know one thing, first and foremost. Your time is limited. You cannot read everything. A typical Sunday edition of the New York Times has more words than two full-length novels. If you can read two novels every Sunday before brunch, you have my respect.

Most of us can’t do that. So we adapt. We complete the daily exercise without ever reading the complete newspaper — something less than every word on every page. We read some articles thoroughly, scan others, skip some others. We may read a headline and start an article before deciding the topic doesn’t interest us — or doesn’t interest us enough.

We consider certain features as daily necessities and others we never read at all, unless we’re shopping for a used car or honing our bridge game. There may be entire sections of a newspaper that we never open.

Perform this ritual every day for years and certain patterns will emerge. You’ll learn the rhythm that suits you best, always knowing you’re free to mix things up any time you choose. If you complete this exercise daily, you’ll be consistently reading and learning about things you didn’t know would interest you.

That last part is also true for people who listen to their morning news on the radio or watch it on TV. But only newspaper readers are actively choosing where their attention will alight on each page, repeating the exercise over and over, adjusting pace, standards and strategies until the allotted time is up or they’ve reached the last page.

This develops a life skill beyond literacy. It’s not the reading; it’s the choosing — page after page, day after day, always with time constraints, never reading every word. You’re strengthening your prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain where planning complex tasks and moderating social behavior takes place. Your brain is flexing its decision-making muscles, performing what’s called the “executive function.”

You need these skills everywhere. Collecting your things as you head out the door, driving a car, navigating a parking lot. In the grocery aisle, you’re comparing products and prices to your list, assembling recipes as you go — considering budget, tastes, schedules, storage, and more. It’s all executive function.

Accomplished executives will tell you that one-third of their salary is earned by the projects they complete. The other two-thirds is earned by discerning which projects they shouldn’t begin.

Newspaper reading is no different. Which two-thirds of the paper can you choose not to read, while still retaining the satisfaction of completing it every day? Because that same executive will tell you something else. No matter how completely you finish a project, tomorrow there will be more to do.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Don’t look now, but the children are getting restless. News reports from Eugene, Washington and New York City show young people are taking matters into their own hands. Combatting climate change is becoming their issue.

Eugene’s so-called Climate Kids case, Juliana v. United States, was featured last weekend on “60 Minutes.” Millions of people now know about these 21 young people who are suing their government for failing to preserve life, liberty, and property for future generations.

Lead attorney Julia Olson is confident that her young clients will win their case on the facts to be presented at trial. The federal government doesn’t seem to disagree, since it is doing everything possible to prevent the trial from happening.

Indeed, the federal government has already granted most of the facts that Olson’s plaintiffs allege. Yes, the federal government has known for 50 years about the possible catastrophic effects of climate change. Yes, the government acknowledges that these changes are caused by subsidizing and burning fossil fuels. And yes, things are worse for the planet now than they’ve been for millions of years.

Those admissions have come before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken convenes her courtroom. You can see why government officials want to avoid a trial.

But there are other stories popping up around the country. Young people around the world are using the same logic, if not the same strategies. Dozens of protesters were arrested recently when they demanded a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The protest included 20 Kentucky high school students and children as young as seven.

Stephen O’Hanlon, organizer of the Sunrise Movement, explained it to reporters this way. “We want to put senators on notice that if they don’t put us before the interests of oil and gas, we’re going to remember that when it’s our turn to vote them out.” He pledged an “army of young people” to make their case on Capitol Hill.

“Young people … are going to be the most impacted by climate change,” O’Hanlon said, “and it’s morally reprehensible for politicians to not take young voices seriously on this issue. They’re the ones who are going to be affected by it — not Mitch McConnell.”

Then there’s 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor. The seventh-grade New Yorker goes to the United Nations every week, demanding action on climate change. She’s coordinating a worldwide School Strike 4 Climate on March 15, urging kids to skip school that day to protest.

Villasenor became a climate activist only a few months ago, after her family felt the effects of wildfires in Northern California. That alerted Villasenor to the problem, but it was a 15-year-old from Sweden who showed her how she could organize a response.

“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes,” Greta Thunberg proclaimed at a global climate change conference in December. “We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

Are we there yet? No, but impatient young people seem ready to do the driving.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.